Square Enix confirmed in a blog post that the growing popularity of Final Fantasy XIV is wreaking havoc on their servers. The game is paying the price of being too popular and right now joining certain servers may take more than half an hour.
To alleviate this, Square Enix has made the difficult decision to remove players from the game who spend more than 30 minutes without sending any commands via keyboard, mouse or controller. Therefore, AFKs or idlers will cease to exist in Eorzea, which was one of the main attractions for many.
Goodbye to the AFKs
In fact, the main cities in the game are full of players who act as NPCs or just watch others go by. Square Enix’s decision is controversial because it is difficult to determine how many come to act as NPCs and leave the game on without doing anything and how many to fight or explore.
Luckily for those who fear change, the solution will be temporary, or at least that is what they indicate on their blog. The idea is to relieve the servers during this game boom and the next expansion. So it is possible that being AFK indefinitely will be a possibility again in the future.
The decision is already being discussed in the game’s Reddit community. Many players celebrate because for every AFK less is another player who can enter without waiting too long. And alleviating waiting times to enter the game has been one of the great requests of the community for years.
Final Fantasy XIV is in a great time right now and is offering 15 days free for players who haven’t logged in in a while. It is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC.
